


Dust to Dust

by rubygirl29



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-29
Updated: 2012-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-30 06:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubygirl29/pseuds/rubygirl29
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A prequel to <i>Runner</i>. Ronon survives the devastation of Sateda, but at a tremendous personal cost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust to Dust

**Dust to Dust**

For two weeks, the Satedan army has fought a losing battle with the Wraith. Allied with humans they had turned into soulless addicts with their enzyme, they forced a relentless retreat across burned fields and destroyed farms against the few Satedans who remained to stand against them. _Fall back!_ has become the most common command his officers issue. Ronon's small platoon fights the rearguard actions as the others retreat; their numbers growing fewer by the day. 

Ronon is exhausted. They are two days from the city of Sateda. If he survives that long, he will be able to see Melena safely through the gate. The commander of the army, Kel, has promised, for a price, that she will be guaranteed safe passage. It has cost Ronon everything he owns, and it may yet cost him his life, but Melena and the child she carries will be safe. She told him of the child the day his company marched out to defend the city. Everything he has done since then has been to keep her safe, keep their baby safe. He doesn't know if he loves her, but he cares deeply for her. Every Satedan child is a blessing. There are so few born in these perilous days that Ronon is proud to know that he will be a father ... if he can get her through the gate to a better world. 

By the fifth day of the retreat, Ronon can see the smoke rising from the city. The scream of Wraith fighters overhead strikes fear into the hearts of his soldiers. Ronon, too, is afraid, but he refuses to show it. He meets up with another company led by Tyre, an old friend. Together, they watch the fires in the darkness. Tyre and his ragtag group of gypsy fighters ask Ronon to join them. He is wearing the armor of a Satedan soldier; he is an officer. He refuses. "You know where to find us," Tyre says. Ronon knows. He will find them where they can do the most damage to the Wraith. 

Two days later, they are at the city gates. The barriers constructed many years ago are useless against airborne forces. They have been left standing as a reminder of Sateda's proud past as a fortress. Before the war, Ronon and Melena walked on the walls in the sun. Now there is barbed wire on the crenellations, and the only people on the walls are soldiers manning gun emplacements. Many of the guns have been damaged or destroyed. The city is on the verge of falling. 

Ronon and his men limp in. They are footsore, weary, filthy, bloody. The men on the walls cheer when they see them, as if his twenty men could save the city. Ronon goes to the building he and Melena called home. There is a gaping hole in the building, but their rooms are in an undamaged part of the complex. Ronon knocks on the door, and it is opened by their landlady, Anissa.

"Ronon Dex! We thought you were dead!" She takes his arms and holds him tightly. "Gods be praised."

"Where is Melena?" he asks, "Did she go to the gate?"

Anissa shakes her head. "She is at the hospital."

Ronon curses and takes off toward the hospital where Melena works as a nurse. The place is in chaos. Weeks of siege have left parts of the building in shambles. There are wounded everywhere and the smell of blood is thick. Overhead, he hears the scream of the Wraith ships as they release more fire bombs. 

He finds Melena in a children's ward. Her white uniform is miraculously clean. There is a slight tautness across her abdomen, and Ronon nearly cries when he sees her. She runs to him, and he places her hand on that slight rise. "Why are you here?" he asks, "Why haven't you gone?"

"They need me here," she said. "I'm a nurse, just like you are a soldier. It's what I am."

"You should have gone with Kel! I sold everything to get you on his staff -- so you would get through the gate!" He grabs her by the arms, wants to shake her out of her stubbornness, but he is too aware of his size here in this room with small beds, small patients. "I have to go back to my soldiers." Ronon turns away.

"Will I see you later?" Melena asks, worried. "Please, Ronon."

"I'll try." He leaves here and knows she is crying before she returns to work. He does not see her again for three days. 

He has been fighting continuously. His company is down to five men. He has dragged their bodies from the streets to keep the Wraith from seeing how thin their defenses are. He has shot down Wraith fighters but the people no longer cheer. Most have fled the city. Ronon knows the Wraith are close to winning. The city is in ruins. Kel, the traitor, had fled through the Ring of the Ancestors. He had taken the money, the possessions of the citizens of Sateda and slipped away like a thief in the night. He has stolen their lives; worse, he had stolen their hope.

Ronon feels like he is walking through a city of dead men and ghosts. He alone survives of his platoon. He carries a fearsome gun, but he is saving his ammunition. He can still get Melena to the Ring. He knows how to hide, where to hide. They must get out of the city; away from the Wraith and the bombs and the ruin. 

The hospital is under siege. The doctors look like dead men, and there is no point in trying to save lives that the Wraith will take. They ease the passage, that is all. Melena fights death as fiercely as Ronon fights his enemies. He find her in a ward with a wounded girl. The child is frightened and clings to Melena, crying. Melena begs Ronon to take her with them. He can't refuse. Melena hands her over to his care. She looks at him, her eyes wide and soft with love. Two seconds later, the window behind her explodes, and as he screams out her name, he is overcome by fire and darkness. 

At first, he thinks he has been blinded, but when he touches his eyes, the lids are sticky with blood. He scrubs at them until he can see again. Bodies surround him. The girl-child is dead. Melena's body is a few feet away. She is face down on the floor, the planks beneath her are black with her blood and the blood of their baby, never to be born. He kneels by her body and keens with grief; for her, for their lost child, for Sateda. Ronon brushes back the veil of her hair. She doesn't look frightened or angry. She looks at peace.

He crawls out of the rubble. Fires are burning everywhere. Dark shapes move through the city streets. The Wraith soldiers take what little life they can find in the bodies of the Satedans. Ronon has known since childhood that the Wraith are the living dead, who feed on the souls of humans. It disgusts him as if they ate their flesh, instead. 

He steps out of the darkness, his gun leveled at a Wraith soldier about to take the last breath of life from a body at his feet. Ronon fires and the Wraith falls dead. He runs over to the Satedan. It is one of his soldiers, the last of his men. He looks at Ronon, whispers dying words he cannot understand. He closes the soldier's eyes when his spirit has gone. He takes the weapons from the Wraith. He gathers bandoliers of ammo from the bodies of Satedan soldiers and hides in the rubble until full darkness falls. Then he begins to hunt. 

Within days he is familiar with the sewers and ancient tunnels beneath the city. He uses them to move from sector to sector. Ronon loses count of how many Wraith he has killed. He knows exactly how many Satedans he has saved from the ruins. Fifty-five. He shows them the ways through the tunnels and out of the city. He hopes a few of them will make it to the Ring of the Ancestors beyond the city. The Sateda gate has been locked for weeks, now. 

By day, he hides. At night, he hunts. He is losing weight, but is still stronger than most men; his muscles are harder and more defined. He can travel great distances and run faster than he could before without being tired. He doesn't like being a scavenger, but he becomes very good at it. Food, weapons, medicine, clothing. He can strip a corpse quickly and with no more emotion than a feeding Wraith. The Wraith begin to believe there is a ghost in Sateda. 

Soon, there are no more living Satedans for him to find and rescue. They have either fled or died. There is just Ronon, the last man. The last Sadetan. The last ghost of his world. 

The Wraith bomb the passages and tunnels, blocking them. Ronon has no more options. His hiding places are discovered, the city above him is a smoking ruin. Most of the Wraith have left the planet now that their food source is gone. 

Most, but not all. They hunt him now like prey; for sport. One dark night, Ronon thinks he hears a cry for help from the rubble of a building. He risks the moonlight because if there is one more life to save he will do it even at the cost of his own. 

He digs through the rubble, intent on the sound. He doesn't hear the Wraith who blasts him; he feels pain, and then ... nothing. 

****  
The torture of being fed on is nothing compared to the hatred in his heart. He hopes it will burn the Wraith like vitriol. The creature snarls at him and drives his the feeding hand into Ronon's chest. It is like an axe of ice is being buried in his breastbone. The human part of him, the vulnerable frailty that is fear, wants to cry. The warrior in him swears that he will not be broken. 

The Wraith hisses and pulls away. He strides out of the chamber, leaving Ronon in the restraining cocoon. A moment later, two more Wraith soldiers cut him free and muscle him out of the chamber, taking him to the Hive ship commander. He looks over Ronon, crosses to him and handles him like chattel. "This one is strong," he says. "He will make good sport. As he hunted us, so we will hunt him." 

He is stripped, restrained, implanted with a tracking device, and dropped back into the ruins of his city. He knows where he can find materials to make weapons. He fashions knives from scrap metal, he takes the armor from dead Wraith and humans alike. His prize is a hide coat from a Wraith commander. It is rare to find something that fits him. 

He kills the three Wraiths who were sent to the planet to hunt him. They call him a Runner. They call him their prey, but at the end of the day, it is his clothing that is soaked with their weak blood. At the end of the day, he is still a warrior. He makes his way to the Ring of the Ancestors. Before he steps through the gate, he looks back at his city of ashes. The taste is bitter in his mouth, the memories bitter in his heart. 

He hopes that somewhere the people he led to safety are alive. Perhaps the survivors will reclaim their world after the Wraith leave Sateda. He runs for his life. He runs for Sateda. He runs because there is no place beneath the pitiless stars where he is not a wanted man. He runs.

**The End**


End file.
